Albania has come a long way

The President of Albania, Ilir Meta, honored me yesterday with the George Kastrioti Scanderbeg Medal. His citation reads as follows:

As a token of appreciation and gratitude for his previous contribution in promoting and aggrandizing the Albanian cause in the United States.

For serving as a powerful voice defending the human rights and freedoms, especially during the difficult years which our nation went through, and also for being a supporter of Kosova’ sovereignty and territorial integrity.

The occasion was a meeting and lively chat with Ambassador Genc Mucaj, President Meta’s senior international advisor, at Dacor-Bacon House here in DC. Also present were my wife and the Atlanic Council’s Riley Barnes, who accepted an award on behalf of former Senator Brownback, with whom he worked at the State Department. We all spoke briefly with President Meta by phone.

Albania and Scanderbeg

My first acquaintanceship with Scanderbeg was in 1977, in Rome. The tiny piazza that bears his name lies in the shadow of the Quirinale, the Italian President’s massive residence. We called in a building opposite on Italian friends of friends, who soon became ours as well. I think they tried to explain Scanderbeg to us. But we spoke little Italian then and they little English. It was only later that I learned of Scanderbeg’s role as the Albanian national hero who fought against the Ottomans and for the Pope in the 15th century.

My familiarity with Albania then was minimal. A product of the Cold War, I’d been taught that Albania was Communist China’s isolated friend, not America’s. I also knew that the two lovers in Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte disguise themselves as wild-looking Albanians to try to seduce each others’ girlfriends, on a wager.

American Embassy Tirana

It was not until 1991 or so that Albania found me as Deputy Chief of Mission at US Embassy Rome. That summer, while I was Charge’, more than ten thousand Albanian refugees fleeing the collapse of the Communist regime arrived in Italy on a single ship:

The Cold War was over. Washington instructed Embassy Rome to tell the Italians that more than 50 years of their possession of the American Embassy in Tirana would come to an end a year hence. The Americans had entrusted the building to the Italians, in return for maintaining the premises, in 1939. I was told to evict them, the sooner the better but in any event within the year.

I did my best. But the Italian Ambassador in Tirana would have none of it. A “bad character,” his colleagues at the Foreign Ministry explained to me, he behaved like a rent control tenant in a Rome apartment. He would not move. The Italians offered to buy the building, telling us it was decrepit and far too small to serve the US.

The embassy has grown

I discovered in my office a coffee-table crushing volume of photographs of Italian embassies around the world, published by the Foreign Ministry. The little building in Tirana was beautiful, I said as I flipped the pages for the Italian Political Director. But the Italians were right about its physical condition and size. The premises had to be renovated after the Italian Ambassador yanked everything he could from the building, leaving gaping holes where air conditioners and electrical conduits had been. He didn’t leave until the last day of the one-year notice.

The State Department rejected the offer to buy, declaring there would never be more than ten or so employees in Tirana. A model Small Embassy they said. There are now well over 100. The State Department had to not only renovate the original building but also build several annexes.

Albania has come a long way

Of course Albania isn’t today what was it was in the 1990s. Then the collapse of government-sponsored pyramid schemes led to a virtual state collapse. That gave me my first opportunity to visit Tirana, in 1997 to observe elections. The city was still mostly unrenovated from Mussolini’s imperial pretensions and Communist decrepitude. There was more gunfire than in Sarajevo during the 1990s war.

Those elections nevertheless marked the beginning of Albania’s recovery and its transition to more serious democracy. It joined NATO in 2009. Albania now aspires to European Union membership. It is currently stalled because of a dispute between Bulgaria and North Macedonia. Once that is resolved, Tirana still faces many hurdles. Not least is in meeting EU standards for rule of law. But qualification for EU membership within the 2020s is certainly feasible.

I won’t get into trouble by commenting on current events. Albanian politics are like rugby, frighteningly rough but not usually fatal. I’d like to keep my status as an interested spectator, not a participant.

But I am grateful and honored, Mr. President Meta and Ambassador Mucaj. And I hope to see you in Tirana in the not too distant future.